1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, method, and program, and particularly relates to an information processing apparatus, method, and program capable of selecting content using menus.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, for television broadcasts etc., services providing EPG (Electronic Program Guide) to users, who will be viewers, have become widespread. The EPG is program guide information constituted by electronic information to show a program broadcast schedule corresponding to so-called newspaper radio/television columns.
Keywords such as a program title, broadcast time, program genre and cast etc. are contained in the EPG and a user can record a program (content) using this EPG.
When EPG is used with recording/playback apparatuses, if a program is recorded, EPG information is recorded. The recorded EPG information is classified into categories based on pre-defined program classification standards, and classification numbers corresponding to categories are allotted for facilitating the recording of programs. (See, for example, International Patent Application Publication Number WO 00/02386).
With this recording/playback apparatus, if a user specifies or selects a classification number, a recorded program corresponding to the specified category number is played back.
Further, if a personal computer (PC) is used as a recording/playback apparatus, a recorded program (content) can be played back by an application program for use in playing back content recorded on a PC.
In this event, a user starts up an multimedia playback application program for playing back various content. An application program for playing back content of each individual format is selected at the multimedia playback application program, and content is played back as a result of a user designating content.
FIG. 1 to FIG. 3 are views illustrating an multimedia playback application program.
In FIG. 1 to FIG. 3, “music”, “photo”, “video”, and “television broadcast” are categories for classifying content that can be selected by a user in application programs for multimedia playback use. Atrac (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding) 3 format content and MP (MPEG Audio Layer) 3 format content are stored as content classified as “music”. Further, JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format content and BMP (BitMap) format content are stored as content classified as “photo”, and MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) 2 format content is stored as content classified as “video”.
Further, if a user specifies a prescribed channel, a program being broadcast at the designated channel is displayed at a display as content classified as “television broadcast”.
As shown in FIG. 1, the respective categories and content are separate at the application programs for multimedia playback use.
Therefore, with the application programs for multimedia use, as shown in FIG. 2, a menu structure for selecting respective categories is hierarchical. A user therefore selects a category of one of “music”, “photo”, “video” and “television broadcast” from a media selection menu and selects an application program for playing back content from the selected category menu. The user selects a folder storing content to be played back, and the content is played back as a result of selecting (designating) the content from the selected folder.
Further, if a user selects “television broadcast” as a category from the media selection menu, a program for playing back content classified as “television broadcast” is selected. A program being broadcast at a designated channel is displayed at the display as a result of designating this desired channel.
As described above, a user is allowed to find a certain content by classifying content in advance as menu items in accordance with a predetermined standard so that the menu item serves as an user interface for searching and selecting a desired content from a numerous number of content, and allowing the user to make sequential selection with a menu of multi-level structure (For example, see Japanese Patent Application Publication Number JP 2003-29931).
However, in the technology disclosed in JP 2003-29931, there is an disadvantage such that, even if a menu level that allows menu item selection is changed to a lower level, a display form of the menu level that has once displayed does not change, thereby making it difficult for a user to intuitively understand in which menu level the user is making the menu item selection or how the different menu levels are inter-related to each other.
Accordingly, it is desirable to change a form of display in each of menu levels depending on an operational phase of the menu item selection. The present invention is made in view of the above-described situation.